A long, long time ago ( in the late 1970's ) in a galaxy about 30 minutes from here ( Woodland, California ) a couple of young cabinet makers started fooling around with computers. They learned a few things about the simple programming languages of that time. And they came up with a simple program to help them calculate some parts for face frame cabinets.
That was the genesis of Cabnetware. As in the biblical account of creation, this creation story has little room in it for evolution. And so it goes, there have been many generations of Cabnetware where this version begat that version and new families of functionality have been born throughout the generations but evolve, it has not.
In the 30 plus years since the late '70s, the advances in computer science and technology have been too numerous to list in any blog. My point, never-the-less, is that while technology has evolved and changed over time to allow for the creation of technologies and information availability far beyond our most fantastic imaginings, the technology behind Cabnetware has changed relatively little. And although, Cabnetware has been rewritten a few times in its history, its own architecture, its own design limits it in the scope of its growth and extensibility.
Here's a real world example. Cabnetware is not a CAD program like AutoCAD. Although, Cabnetware can do some CAD things, under the hood, its a whole different animal. Consequently, Cabnetware has a very limited set of CAD functionality and since it doesn't speak the language of modern CAD programs, it only has a very limited communication with other CAD programs, mostly through importing and exporting data.
Here's another real world example of Cabnetware's design limitations. Since there is no database on the back end of Cabnetware, getting some very simple but necessary production reports are impossible to obtain within the program. If you are using Cabnetware's estimating module, for example, you can't make a report of all the outstanding estimates you have currently and report on the dollar value of those estimates. Cabnetware doesn't work like that because it doen't have a base of data to draw from.
I'm not here to bash Cabnetware. On the contrary, if I didn't believe Cabnetware was the best thing on the market for what it does best, I wouldn't have bought a license. It is very good at its core competencies which are designing rooms full of cabinets and preparing those designs for manufacture.
I'm as guilty as the next human when it comes to my desire for instant gratification. The big software companies have spoiled us rotten and made it very difficult for small software companies like Cabnetware and Planit to respond in a timely way to all the "wouldn't be nice if the program did this" requests. Microsoft spends bazillions of dollars ( that's bazillions with a BAZ ) on software development. And Microsoft can literally rewrite some of their best selling products by simply turning their throngs of developers in a new direction. Cabnetware and Planit, on the other, tiny end of that spectrum, can neither afford rewrites nor respond effectively to requests for new functionality.
So we are stuck with some expensive software that does some good stuff, but its highly unlikely we are going to see a new generation of Cabnetware or a new evolution of that software in our lifetime.
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